Charters
National Gazette, January 19, 1792
In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set
the example and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by
liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest
praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most
consoling presage of its happiness. We look back, already, with
astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason
and the rights of man; We look forward with joy, to the period, when it
shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound for ever in the chains,
with which it had loaded its miserable victims.
In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the
importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between
power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts, proclaiming the
will, and authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source
of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every
citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed
by every citizen in public trust.
As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all
others, because they give effect to all others. As trusts, none can be more
sacred, because they are bound on the conscience by the religious sanctions
of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other
landmarks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private
right, not of one, but of all.
The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the
energy of their constitutional charters.
Having originated the experiment, their merit will be estimated by its
success.
The complicated form of their political system, arising from the partition
of government between the states and the union, and from the separations and
subdivisions of the several departments in each, requires a more than common
reverence for the authority which is to preserve order thro' the whole.
Being republicans, they must be anxious to establish the efficacy of popular
charters, in defending liberty against power, and power against
licentiousness: and in keeping every portion of power within its proper
limits; by this means discomfiting the partizans of anti-republican
contrivances for the purpose.
All power has been traced up to opinion. The stability of all governments
and security of all rights may be traced to the same source. The most
arbitrary government is controuled where the public opinion is fixed. The
despot of Constantinople dares not lay a new tax, because every slave thinks
he ought not. The most systematic governments are turned by the slightest
impulse from their regular path, when the public opinion no longer holds
them in it. We see at this moment the executive magistrate of Great-Britain,
exercising under the authority of the representatives of the people, a
legislative power over the West-India commerce.
How devoutly is it to be wished, then, that the public opinion of the United
States should be enlightened; that it should attach itself to their
governments as delineated in the great charters, derived not from the
usurped power of kings, but from the legitimate authority of the people; and
that it should guarantee, with a holy zeal, these political scriptures from
every attempt to add to or diminish from them. Liberty and order will never
be perfectly safe, until a trespass on the constitutional provisions for
either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents an invasion of the
dearest rights; until every citizen shall be an argus to espy, and an pigeon
to avenge, the unhallowed deed.